Just To Get High
by Kimiko Heroux
Summary: A DF one-shot I started a long time ago. I decided to try the overused, cliche what-if-Koichi-actually-died plot and worked with it, based on Just To Get High by Nickelback. No pairings, no OCs.


**I started this so long ago that I didn't even know if I was gonna finish it, despite how short it is. But we started short stories in English, so I figured I could finish it and use it if we had to write one. And thus, I actually got motivation to dust off the Microsoft Word document and open it. **

**Anyway, this one-shot is for the cliche idea that if Koichi actually died in episode 50, Koji'd be completely broken and stuff. The reason I actually started it was because I got inspiration from the song Just To Get High by Nickelback. It just seemed to really fit the situation and it seemed like it'd be Takuya's POV and talking about Koji. To better understand this story and where I got some of the parts, I'd definitely recommend listening to this song.**

**The kind of relationships in here aren't shonen-ai. For example, Koji's depressed-ness for Koichi's death isn't KouKou, and Takuya's caring for Koji isn't Takouji. Just lots of family-based love. This is solely anime-based, so my Frontier OC Mirai isn't in this. If that's a disappointment to anyone, I apologize.**

**But this is probably a work of my angsty side again, as is most of my Frontier writings. But all of that aside, I hope you enjoy this!**

* * *

Just To Get High

It hadn't been all that long ago, less time than had truly passed. How life had completely changed around. Things had been so much better before it happened; those current trivialities seemed like nothing compared to now. It didn't matter that an entire world, separate to the one of the humans', was at stake.

It didn't change Koichi's fate.

Things had returned normal for just about everyone, a new, bright outlook on their lifestyles. Relationships had improved, hidden courage and strength was unburied from within, lives had completely flipped around for the better. It was as if their old personalities simply didn't exist anymore, another person just taking them over; new, more pleasurable copies that merely looked like them from the outside.

But this wasn't the case for Koji Minamoto.

He constantly found himself wandering the streets of Shinjuku, Odaiba, Shibuya…just about anywhere but _that_ station. Time after time, after coming back home well past curfew, sometimes out the entire night, his father and stepmother would interrogate him, trying to get him to say just where he was and what he was doing.

These were questions Koji never answered to, nor actually knew himself. To him, it merely felt like his mind was trapped in some other place, searching for resolutions to things he knew not of. Things that made him unmotivated to do nothing but search for unknown enlightenment day in and day out, drifting to places in the recesses of his mind that where unfamiliar, yet somehow…alluring.

When finding that such place in his psyche, it seemed to unlock a new, appealing sense of right and wrong, a new voice that replaced his old conscience. It spoke louder words, words of many possibilities. Possibilities he never would have considered if Koichi was here with him. If he was actually happy.

It wasn't at all unanticipated to the children inheritors of the Spirits of the Legendary Warriors that Koji would be the one most affected by their fellow Warrior's passing. The twins held this special link, a bond that just completed them both, one that seemed to bring the best out of the _entire_ group. And when this bond was broken, it was as though everything just fell apart.

And no one truly knew what to do to try to mend that bond, somehow, someway. It seemed to the rest of the group that Koji never really even seemed there anymore because of this broken tie; his eyes were always clouded with thought, like he was in a mental lockdown that none of his friends could bring him out of.

After a while, however, he stopped calling them friends…

* * *

A look in shop windows brought so much significance for Koji. Each time, he could see his reflection, and through his reflection, he could see Koichi's. Their similarities were a curse, a constant reminder of things and loved ones lost. Each look he saw his own face, he was ridden with such pain, like he was being stabbed repeatedly by a machete by his best friend.

He stopped to gaze past his reflection into the store itself, his heart suddenly jumping with a powerful strike of hope. But the feeling was soon betrayed by his eyes, the giver of such false expectation. Of course. No Koichi.

He sighed, knowing that he should be used to the fact that his older brother was never going to be with him ever again. He didn't want to give up; however, there was something inside him that kept telling him maybe it just wasn't too late. But maybe he should anyway…

He brought a closed fist to the glass, making a small tapping noise. He had never felt so useless before, like there was no meaning to anything anymore. Like all things lost all the significance that they held once before. "I'd give anything for Koichi to be here…" he whispered to the wind, beginning his tread back to his house. "…_Nii-san_…"

He walked through the doors of the Minamoto household at eight-thirty-two pm, reasonably early compared to most other nights. His father, Kousei Minamoto, had noticed the arrival of his son and set down the book he was reading in order to speak to him with minimal distractions.

He tried to lock gazes with his broken son. "Koji…" He trailed off as he watched the Warrior of Light ignore his presence, giving no signs of even seeing his father, walk up the stairs and to his room without a word. This is what happened every time Koji came home, and this is what made him worried. Things were just not getting any better. And now was probably the best time to go and talk to him, to try to get him to say exactly what was getting him down.

Koji set himself on his bed and just remained there staring out into space. He bit his lip; there had to be something that could take away this pain, something that could fill that giant hole where his heart was supposed to be. But without Koichi here, unable to come back, that solution seemed nonexistent. As real as Koichi was now…

He soon felt a stinging sensation on his lip. He wiped the lower one with his index finger and gazed at the small stain of blood tarnished on it. It hadn't been pain that he felt at that exact moment. Instead there was something in the crimson that gave him a strange twinge in the back of his mind, one that made his expectations leap, something he had considered doing many times before, but had never followed through with.

He stood up and walked over to his desk. Opening a drawer, he saw inside lying before him a pocketknife. He had gotten it years ago from his father, who said that his grandfather, Koji's great-grandfather, had used it in World War II when he was only nineteen. He had recently began to wonder if that was true, how many other lies Kousei had told him _besides_ having a mother that was alive and a twin brother that he didn't know he had. Maybe he was living his entire life based on a body of lies that provided the foundation of his being.

He flipped the sharpest blade out. Despite the knife's age (or at least the _acclaimed _age), it was still fairly sharp, since boredom had gotten to Koji at one point or another that he didn't bother recalling and made him sharpen it. But it made this all the more easier. Taking it in one hand, he held out his hand, palm up so he could see all of the veins through that thin layer of skin that covered them. Maybe this could help all of the pain he was feeling…

Holding the blade mere inches from his skin, he focused all of his concentration on his current action, calculating just where and how deep to make the incision. But right before he could follow through at his desired location, he heard a knock at his door, causing him to jump, momentarily startled, and slice open three of his fingers.

Frustrated, he looked up from his hands and turned his attention to what had caused him to miss his target. "What?" he scoffed, sounding nothing like a question and more like a demand that he actually didn't want answered as it would fill the silence that he preferred to talking to anyone, putting in no forced affection or feeling in his voice. It was all just annoyance and the release of just a little of his bottled up anger.

The door opened and Kousei stepped in. He didn't gaze around the room like he normally did, or strung a few notes on Koji's guitar to reminisce when he used to play; he just kept his eyes upon his son. "Koji, I wanted to—" He then, much to Koji's irritation, noticed the blood oozing from his fingers of one hand and the knife open in the other. "Koji, what happened?" Mixed with the concern, Koji also heard a bit of annoyance. Oh, yeah, that's right, Koji was only a nuisance to him…useless…just like he was in trying to help Koichi…

Koji stayed silent. His father would never buy it if he said he was "just playing with it" or "just looking at it". Those were answers that _could_ have worked when he was like five, but not now. Now he was guilty for everything, no matter how innocently he presented the situation. But there were never any times were Koji had to sit there and wonder, 'Okay, now how to present?'

This was because he found no real, good reason to explain to his father what he was going through, since he found out what Kousei really was hiding from him all those years. He knew from that would come another way to get blamed for things he just didn't want to try bearing on his shoulders, and through and through, he could do without another person nagging on him. They'd probably think that's he has this really big psychotic problem and send him to a therapist or something. Then there'd be another person asking him stupid questions.

Koji averted his gaze away from his father's vexed face, his eyes lying onto the blade in his hand. Instead of saying nothing, he figured maybe an explanation—though it didn't have to be completely truthful—could maybe get his dad off his back. "My hand slipped and I cut accidentally myself…" He trailed off and made an effort to hang his head. His words were only half true. His had did actually slip, yes, but his intention was to self-inflict despite that. His words only made him seem more above suspicion, and more above insanity.

"I'll go get some disinfectant and bandages," Kousei said, walking out of the room, letting out a sigh that he had assumed Koji hadn't heard, but in reality, took in and glowered at. He glanced back at Koji for a brief second before disappearing down the hall and down the stairs. Koji could hear him speaking to someone, almost without a doubt his stepmother, Satomi.

Koji let out a sigh, looking down at his hand. Blood was oozing from the wound and streaming down his arm. He wasn't satisfied; maybe it was for the fact that that injury was mostly accidental, but it just made him crave something more, something else that was more fulfilling. This was just not enough, hardly worth his time. What he did just then—what he had _tried_ to do—seemed pathetic in contrast to everything else that had filled his head. All he had to do was carry out everything that had appeared in his mind that had appealed to him so.

Out of the frustration that developed with the lack of satisfaction he had received from such a thing as failing at inflicting harm upon himself, he cast the knife from his hand onto the floor, glaring at it with dark blue eyes. It had gotten stuck in the wood that was under carpeting and was sticking in, the angle pointing at directly at him like an accusing finger. And he knew that he really deserved to be indicted. He had done nothing to stop his brother's—his _twin_ brother's—death and what did he get for it? Life without Koichi. That, he knew, was hardly anything to call life at all. Actually, he reasoned, it was more like hell.

This was what drove him to that point of absolute closure and isolation. He had caused enough harm by being there, for actually harnessing friendship and love, and that proved to be reasoning enough to cut off from those he cared about. Simply fabricated was that assumption, and it became a truth for him as soon as he had taken into account what it could possibly mean for those he wanted to stay happy and safe: If he wasn't around, he wouldn't cause any disturbance in their lives, nothing to disrupt the peace that they lived in. He was to trade it all for the pleasure of his friends, and for what cost? Loneliness. That couldn't have been as horrible as it sounded; he had made his way through life before by himself, so what made it so different?

* * *

"_I have no regrets…no regrets…"_

Koji woke up in a cold sweat, breathing heavily from the shock of the words that continually echoed in his mind. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the smiling face of his older brother, something that pained him every moment the darkness behind his eyelids consumed him. Koichi had smiled, laughed with him, even though he knew of his form in the world where he met his brother wasn't actually physical, even though he knew that he may never see his brother again once back in the real world. In fact, he knew he might no longer exist after they left the Digital World. And yet, Koichi cared about Koji enough to hide the knowledge of his inevitable death from him, just so he didn't have to worry about never seeing him again.

Despite the sporadic appearances of Koichi's face that always seemed to appear every time he blinked, it had been the first time he actually fell asleep since he had gotten back from the Digital World. Only ever so often, however, he would doze for a few short moments, only to awaken to the same scene that had put him in that very state. Though he couldn't call them nightmares; regardless of the pain that came through it, every second he saw his older brother's form, he wished it would have lasted still all the longer, just so maybe he could ponder upon and imprint the face that looked ever so similar to his own.

He lifted himself into a sitting position and glanced over at the clock. Eleven twenty-three. He had dozed for twenty minutes, twenty minutes of seeing Koichi's face one more time. That thought was in a distinct way appealing to him, although it came with an all too frustrating cost. Sleep was his only connection to his brother, but the death of his brother made him more or less of an insomniac. After this conclusion, he thought, _There has to be another way…_

He then proceeded to throw his legs off the side of the bed and stand up. He was already highly-attuned and adjusted to the darkness, wide awake with no chance of getting back to sleep. But then, catching his attention, his cell phone lying on his desk vibrated.

This being of slight surprise to him, caught his curiosity, and he picked up his phone and flipped it open. It was a text message from Takuya, and God knows what he was doing up,

_Can't sleep, huh?_

The message made him make a slight double-take. _How did he…?_

As if on cue, he heard a knocking sound, causing him to spin around and look out his window. Sure enough, Takuya had found a way onto his roof and was waiting for him to open the window. Koji assumed that he had climbed the tree growing next to the house and then climbed onto the roof.

He knocked again, and Koji reluctantly opened the window. The Warrior of Flame climbed through and dropped himself down on Koji's bed. Like always, he immediately started talking, "I saw you today walking in Osaki." His mouth remained a thin, flat line. "What is going on in that head of yours, buddy? You have everyone so worried."

Koji stared straight into Takuya's bright brown eyes as if he was trying to transfer his thoughts without having to speak them with physical words. He couldn't really put what he wanted to say out into the air, his voice was caught up in his throat. "It's no one else's business," he retorted, the darkness of the night casted upon his face and concealed the look he didn't want his friend to see. That look of pain that he's always hidden for as long as could remember.

Takuya narrowed his eyes, trying to make out the things written on the lone wolf's face. "You can't keep this to yourself. You have to accept the fact that Koichi's not coming back. You have to take the loss and move on." He knew that his words sounded so harsh, but they had to be said, no matter what initial damage would be dealt. "I don't want you to fall into depression because of an event you couldn't have changed no matter how much you wanted to."

The younger twin shifted his gaze down to look at his bandaged hand. He didn't want to comment on Takuya's latest statement. Deep down, he knew he was right, but it just didn't give him the satisfaction he was looking for. "What are you doing here, anyway?" he growled, changing the subject.

The brunette threw his hand back behind his head, rubbing the back of his head and giving him a wry grin. "Well, your dad told me you've become a bit of an insomniac, so I figured it didn't really mattered what time I dropped by. And since I got a bit bored after watching some TV, I snuck out and went to the one person I knew would be up." It was a rather pathetic excuse, but that could only be expected from one like Takuya Kanbara.

Koji shifted to direct his form away from his closest friend. He wanted to tell him everything that bogged him down inside, but what would be the cost? Maybe he would feel better, but it wouldn't bring his brother back. "Whatever…" he trailed off, balling his fists till his knuckles began to turn white.

Takuya recognized that look in his eyes. It tore him up inside to see the feelings that he continued to hide. He knew he had been lying to his parents; he told them everything was all right. But that was far from the truth. Takuya had been there to watch as the lying turned slowly into isolation from the world around him. There seemed to be this invisible barrier he created, separating him from all those who could possibly help him. It was almost as though he wished not to be assisted with this mental struggle.

As the two teens began to sit in silence, the darkness seemed to close in from all angles. Like all forms of life were eliminated; all of the sources of comfort around were circling the drain and simply ceased to exist. As Takuya hoped he could somehow bring help to his friend, Koji was pondering the exact opposite. There was no one that could help him now. Koichi, his only brother, was gone now, as was all of his remaining happiness. The light of a bright tomorrow was drained from his enmity; the light inside him had been pinched out like the smallest candle.

* * *

It was apparent that Takuya had gone home sometime during the night, after Koji had managed to briefly doze off so that he wouldn't get caught for sneaking out without permission from his parents, because he wasn't there when the light hit the black-haired boy's face and caused him to awake.

He didn't know for certain if he should've felt relief for his friend's departure. On one hand, he hadn't wanted the Warrior of Flame to be there in the first place; he only proved to be an annoyance. But on the other hand, it brought him some peace of mind to have a friendly face right by his side. The thought made him grimace. Koichi had given him that same expression right before he passed. That same look that promised eternal companionship.

Days later, as Koji made his way through his house, right after the sun had disappeared below the horizon, he caught sight of the glistening of his stepmother's engagement and wedding rings sitting out in the open on the kitchen table. He wasn't sure what made him reach for them, but in just a few moments of hardly any thought, he had pocketed them and was out the door to wander the streets of Japan as he always had all the days before.

All of this had affected him greatly. Being out all this time, day or night, he never got to eat, nor found motivation to do so. That, and with the assistance of the extra exercise, drained him physically. His clothes hung loosely on his small frame now and his face was pale, his eyes encircled with red, and the bones in his cheeks becoming easily visible to give him the appearance that one would see on a corpse. All of this was a duplicate of what he was turning into on the inside as well. He was fading away into nothingness, losing all sense of feelings and emotions, inside and out. Soon there'd simply be nothing left.

He walked down the street with little purpose, rain beginning to fall and drench him from head to toe. His legs just seemed to move on his own, his mind wandering to places beyond Tokyo, beyond all of Japan, beyond this world's outermost atmospheres, to the place where his brother was. A paradise he wished to be in.

He didn't believe in any God. If God were real, he reasoned, nothing of this sort would have happened to him. He wouldn't be feeling this way, his brother would still be here with him, and he would actually _love_ the life he was living. _Yeah_, he thought with a frown, _I wouldn't be like this. I wouldn't be feeling like was dead, but each morning awaking to that bitter reality…_

His body had taken him to the doorstep of an antique shop. The sign read 'Closed', but before he knew what he was doing, Koji was reaching for the door and finding that it was unlocked. He noticed the lights inside were on and there was a figure moving around inside. He paid no mind to putrid signs; there was something here that was calling to him.

The shop was rather small, the shelves lined neatly up parallel to the walls that surrounded them and all the wares that they held. When the door swung open, a bell rang and the clerk, a pleasant-appearing woman that seemed to be in her mid to late thirties or so, looked up from the cash register she had been working at.

Her face curved into a look of confusion, the sudden appearance of the weary teenager startling her. She instantly began to speak. "I'm sorry, but—" Koji didn't let her finish once he had gotten over to the counter and stood directly across from her.

At this moment, not even he knew what he was doing. This was all instinct; his being was moving without his willing it. "Give me money for these." He slammed the rings on the counter, and at the rough contact, the woman again seemed to jump. His motives were so unlike the real Koji, driven by the idea that maybe money would buy his happiness, that maybe if he didn't see his stepmother's rings, he wouldn't be reminded that it was because his father fell for another woman that he was separated from his twin brother. His _nii-san_.

The clerk was too stunned by his callous tone and demands to respond properly. She couldn't compose herself the way the situation intended. "I-I..." Words ceased to escape from her lips; her mind was in too much of a panic to think of the thing to say at this moment.

Koji lost himself in the moment. It seemed that he began to lose parts of his mind ever since he returned from that place that started to bring him down onto his knees, and now that last portion of his sanity that remained was shattered into millions of shards, like pieces of sharp glass. And like all those who break glass, he was about to cut himself with it.

"Now!" he snarled fiendishly, ripping the pocketknife that he didn't even realize he had placed in his pocket out and bringing it to her throat. "Do it!" His once-serene, sapphire blue eyes was now twisted into a fierce death glare, his rage and hatred flaring like a wildfire in the sea-colored orbs.

"Hey! Get away from my wife!"

Koji's eyes darted across the room, locking gazes with a man on the other side of the room. The teen's face changed to a look of alarm as realization flooded to him in a wave of emotion. What was he doing? What was he _going to do_? Was he going actually harm an innocent person? He'd be no better—he _was_ no better—than the one that took away his brother's life from him…

His hand went numb as he dropped the knife out of his grasp. "I-I'm sorry…" Before no moves could be made by either husband or wife, he threw the door open and was instantly pelted by the sheets of night's pouring rain.

The cold he felt on his skin from the drenching drops of heaven's tears was nothing like what he felt like inside. This whole time he had hatred and blame in his heart for someone taking his brother's life when he was just about to do the same to someone he didn't even know, who did nothing against him, nothing to be held against her. What kind of monster was he?

The rain blinded his vision, which was heeded further by the tears that began to seep from his eyes. There was so much emotion he withheld from the world that he wanted to express and now it was escaping from him at last. It was a constant chest-stabbing, a feeling of absolute agony that emitted from his heart, down to his toes and then back up again.

He turned the corner into a dark, desolate alleyway. In his recklessness, one foot twisted around because of the slippery mud the rain had created, and he felt his body crumble down to the ground. He found no strength to bring him back up to his feet; there was nothing bringing him the reason to not remain there until his last breath because all he wanted to do at that moment was die.

* * *

He awoke to the feeling of the sun beating upon his back, drying the feeling of the icy cold rain of the night before that chilled him to his core. Every inch of his already-weak body ached, and the sun that rested upon was the only blessing he had received since his brother died.

"Koji…Koji…" He was suddenly aware of a warm, gentle hand upon his shoulder, gesturing for him to get up to his knees. All the boy could manage at the moment was to open his eyes and see Takuya's figure looming over him. "Hey, what happened to you?"

Words instantly found their way out of Koji's cut and chapped lips. "Takuya, just kill me. Please just do me this one favor." His voice came out cracked, burning his throat with the breath it took to speak.

"That's not a favor, Koji." Takuya held his friend steady as he tried to get up into a sitting position. "You can't keep living like this. Your parents looked everywhere for you all night as soon as they found out you were gone. There are people here that care about you; you can't just leave them."

The lone wolf put up his objections as a sort of barrier between him and the world. He knew that no one would understand the hurt he felt. "But my brother…" Was all he could say. That's all he felt he really needed to say. "…Koichi—"

The brunette made sure Koji was looking him directly in the face before he spoke. His words came deep from in the corridors of his heart; he knew he had to help his best friend through this pain, despite his protests. And so he continued from where he had cut Koji off, "—is gone. Think about it. Koichi wouldn't want you to be like this; he'd want you to continue to live life to the fullest. Don't let him down; live on for him."

Takuya found pain in the way Koji's face was arranged. His hair was mangled, gashes covered his cheeks and forehead, and mud had crusted everywhere his head had contacted the ground. His eyes were bloodshot and its blue color was a dull cerulean, ice cold tears running down his cheeks like little rivers. He was just in such a bad way; such a mess that the Fire Warrior found guilt for not trying to help him sooner.

He grunted as he helped Koji up to his feet, slinging his friend's thin, bony arm around his shoulder and holding him steady. "You can't take the world on all by yourself, Koji. You walk the streets like you're the only one around. You have more brother than one." He smiled as the raven-haired teen turned his head to look in the revelation. "And you can never forget, Koichi's always going to be watching over you like a big brother should."


End file.
